


After the Moon | Before the Sun

by orphan_account



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Character Study, Dysphoria, Gen, Post-Canon, Prompt Fic, Trans Female Character, Xing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 02:31:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1370644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the early morning she lifts her body from the ceiling rafters, stretching out a body of coiled muscle and taut flesh carved over the years into granite and steel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Moon | Before the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Backburner fic #2. One of my friends requested more trans!Lan Fan experiencing mild dysphoria, though I lost the prompt [in my haste to respond back asking whether she was okay].
> 
> Takes place in Xing a few years post-canon. Trigger warning for discussion of dysphoria and implied internalised transphobia. Takes place in the same timeline as "To Guard an Emperor | To Serve Xing", so feel free to read that afterwards. Also, the masculinity/femininity symbols I employ in my writing, as brute-force as they are, do function (even if I mess with the legend of the feng for my own purposes), so thank you for pointing that out, Gender Theory Anon.
> 
> Unedited/unbeta'd/etc. Enjoy and thank you for reading!

After the moon has slipped past the fog-crested mountains to the west but before the sun has begun to ride the lightening sky, Lan Fan awakens. Dips into the _chi_. Assures the cycle of the Emperor’s quiet breathing in his fitful slumber: In his sleep the homunculus that rent black diamond from his skin rises from the dark seas of history; in his sleep the civil war that nearly tore the fledgeling progressive Xing from his outstretched grasp returns like the neverending story of the snake devouring its own tail; in his sleep, almost past.

In the early morning she lifts her body from the ceiling rafters, stretching out a body of coiled muscle and taut flesh carved over the years into granite and steel.

Guarding an Emperor—serving Xing—means stripping herself of humanity, in favour of one who can truly guard the Dragon of Xing without a single thought of herself. Except in this sliver of space in the morning between the end of her cycle as a woman asleep and useless, and the beginning of her cycle as a guard awoken and protective.

She slips down to the painted floorboards. The room, swathed with diaphanous silk of red and gold, the colour of Xing and the colour of the Yao, marked with the twin emblems of the dragon and the phoenix. _Long_ and _feng_ , masculine and feminine, yang and yin.

The water in the washbasin ripples beneath a thin crust of ice. Winter in Xijing, the same winter that she has lived through over the years, the people cloaking themselves for the cold only to resurrect with the fires of spring. She breaks through the frost with a swift snap of her wrist as if gutting an animal. The ice splinters.

Cold over her fingers.

She splashes the liquid chill over her face and whatever lingering exhaustion from the night vanishes. Glancing at herself in the looking glass of the water, she observes the waves in the fabric of her dark black armour as it draws over her shoulders, her stomach, her thighs to pool at her feet. Although she keeps her gaze on her hands, from the corner of her vision she catches the glimpse of her chest.

Flat.

No matter the binding of her breasts or the subtle curve of her chest for layers of cloth she wears, her chest remains pale and flat as the day some ten, twelve years ago when she first stared at herself— _truly_ stared at herself—and recognised not a boy in the mirror, as everyone around her seemed to see, but a girl.

A girl with dirt on her nose and bruises on her limbs. But her training brought her a fierce joy, and she would never have given it up.

Of course, her worry does not exist alone. Plenty of women hold the same discomfort: She has heard whispers of small-breasted girls complaining to themselves, seen the street whores with the protective dresses that slit up their throat and pad out their chests. A perfectly normal concern. Perfectly normal, she repeats to herself, and moves on to reiterate in her mind the various weapons she has at her disposal, her kunai, her garrotte, her additional throwing knives, her crossbow bolts, her bead of cyanide—for emergencies only, as the Emperor has forced her to promise over and over again—their locations on her person, the ideal situations in which to use every one, the variety of ways to kill a man with nothing but her bare hands.

She washes. The cleansing settles over every centimetre of her, until she glows softly from a combination of icy water and cleanliness. With her skin still wet she fingers the linen. Arches her back, as she has read female warriors do until their chests are flat as a man’s. Watches herself in the looking glass of the water—now slightly sullied at the edges with her heat—until _her_ chest is flat as a man’s. Winds the bandages about her breasts. Ties them off. Conceals herself.

Breathes.

One by one she slips on her of cloth, of padding, of hardened armour. The wood cool against her face, she presents the painted mask to the world, marked with the yin, as the Emperor’s mask is marked with the feng.

She takes her place by the Emperor’s side just as he awakens to another day. Guarding an Emperor—serving Xing—means stripping herself of humanity, in favour of one who can truly guard the Dragon of Xing without a single thought of herself. Except in that sliver of space in the morning between the end of her cycle as a woman asleep and useless, and the beginning of her cycle as a guard awoken and protective.

Now that sliver has passed, and she is Lan Fan again.


End file.
